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The aggregated open interest for Bitcoin futures across major exchanges has returned to all-time high levels, according to data on Bybt.

As of press time, the total open interest for Bitcoin futures is at $27.2 billion, just shy of the $27.38 billion recorded in mid-April. This comes amid Bitcoin’s rally that has set a new all-time high at almost $67,000 on Coinbase Pro.

The open interest on U.S. derivative marketplace CME has seen the largest jump among major trading venues compared to the records in mid-April when Bitcoin first hit the $64,000 level. The Bitcoin futures open interest on the marketplace is now at $5.36 billion, up over $2 billion since the April high and is now the second largest after Binance.

The open interest volume on Binance and FTX has also each increased by over $1 billion compared to their volumes in April.

The volumes on Huobi and OKEx, on the other hand, have dropped sharply in part due to China’s crackdown on crypto trading as the two exchanges have large customer bases in the country. Bitcoin futures open interest on Huobi was once at $3.14 billion in mid April but now sits at less than $1 billion, the data also shows.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

A non-fungible token (NFT) game called MonkeyBall has raised $3 million as the latest experiment in the surging “play-to-earn” sector, where gamers reap crypto rewards for their time.

The soccer game is being developed with the Unity game engine on the Solana blockchain in a bid to be a high production value, AAA-grade title, the company said Thursday.

In the game, users manage a team of four monkeys that play head-to-head matches against other users. Team’s earn tokens for victories and can collect additional rewards for buying stadiums and attending the matches of other users.

Read more: The First ‘Move-to-Earn’ NFT Game Raises $8.3M

The funding round was backed by Solana Capital, Republic, NFX, iAngels and Longhash, and included angel investment from multiple DraftKings founders and the sports betting platform’s largest shareholder, billionaire Shalom Meckenzie.

“Play-to-earn games are a revolution in how gamers interface with the virtual world,” Meckenzie said in a press release. “Gaming and NFTs will be the first true mass appeal application of blockchain, all that is missing is to actually make a game that would stand tall among AAA titles. I believe the MonkeyBall team has what it takes to get there.”

MonkeyBall, a crypto startup building a play-to-earn NFT game based on Solana, has raised $3 million in a seed funding round.

The round saw participation from several investors, including Jump Capital, CMS Holdings, Solana Capital, 6th Man Ventures, and NFX, among others.

Angel investors, including billionaire Shalom Meckenzie, one of the largest shareholders in sports-betting firm DraftKings; Yoni Assia, co-founder of eToro; Nimrod Lehavi, co-founder of Simplex; and Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of crypto payments startup COTI, also backed the round. Bar-Geffen will also serve as MonkeyBall’s chairman.

MonkeyBall’s founders and the core team are Israeli, Bar-Geffen told The Block. The startup’s current headcount is 17, and it is looking to hire more people with the fresh capital in place, said Bar-Geffen.

MonkeyBall is building an NFT soccer game that will reward players and watchers. The game can be described as “an intersection between FIFA Street and Final Fantasy,” according to MonkeyBall. Players will be able to earn MonkeyBucks ($MBS) tokens for winning or attending other people’s games.

Play-to-earn NFT games are a quickly growing application of blockchain technology.

Gigi Levy-Weiss, general partner at NFX, believes that the space will only continue to grow. “The winners will be those teams that combine the best of blockchain know-how with amazing game-design capabilities, that know how to utilize and unite the best of both Blockchain and ‘traditional’ gaming sectors,” he said. “MonkeyBall is the best one we’ve seen yet!”

The game is being developed on an engine by Unity Technologies and be available on both desktop and mobile platforms. It is planned to launch “around Christmas,” said Bar-Geffen.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Cryptocurrency investment firm Meta4 Fund Management said it is launching a new non-fungible tokens (NFT)-focused fund with lead investment from Andreessen Horowitz (A16z).

• The Meta4 NFT fund is managed by Meta4′s founding partners Brandon Buchanan and Nabyl Charania and will invest in rare digital art and collectibles such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, gaming-related NFTs such as Zed Run and metaverse-related purchases such as virtual land.
• A16z has been actively investing in the NFT space. In March, it was the lead investor in a $23 million fundraising round for popular NFT marketplace OpenSea.
• NFTs are digital assets that represent a wide range of items, from collectible sports cards to virtual real estate and even digital sneakers. The metaverse is a space generated by the convergence of virtual worlds, augmented reality and internet services.
• “NFTs are the driving force behind a new generation of internet products and services that are sharing value directly between the millions of developers, artists, collectors, and even gamers that participate – rather than platforms that simply act as a middleman,” said Arianna Simpson, general partner, A16z Crypto, in a press release. “The Meta4 Capital team has a unique, proven pulse on the NFT market and across the web3 spectrum, and we’re thrilled to partner with them on this new fund.”
• Buchanan said Meta4 has witnessed the “disintermediation of intellectual property and where things are ultimately headed in web3 as a result of blockchain technology.”

Read more: A16z, Coinbase Back CoinSwitch Kuber in $260M Funding Round

Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) is investigating two local crypto firms, Safello and Goobit, according to an announcement on its official website.

• FI said on Thursday that it wants to know how local crypto firms are complying with the European nation’s anti-money laundering (AML) rules.
• To that end, FI has picked what it calls two “market-leading” companies that have a combined market capitalization of over 570 million Swedish krona ($67 million).
• According to the announcement, crypto firms act as a bridge between traditional finance and the digital asset sector which has “a high risk of money laundering.”
• “Therefore, FI has initiated investigations into how Safello and Goobit follow the money laundering rules,” the announcement said.
• FI reiterated that companies that offer virtual currency services are required to register with the agency as financial institutions to comply with the Act on Currency Exchange and Other Financial Activities (LVA)
• Both Safello and Goobit are listed on Nasdaq’s First North Growth Market, an alternative marketplace of Nasdaq Nordic for small to medium-sized companies.
• In May, Safello’s planned initial public offering (IPO) was oversubscribed by 1,240%.
• At the time of reporting, Safello shares were down 6% while Goobit was down 9%.

Read more: Bitcoin Exchange Safello Raises $1.3M for Planned 2021 IPO

Trava Finance is the world’s first decentralized marketplace for cross-chain lending, offering a flexible mechanism for users to create and manage their lending pools by setting their parameters. By these groundbreaking functions, Trava has changed the way lending operations are conducted all over the crypto world these days because other lending platforms only have a single lending pool with rigid rules defined by themselves.  

Trava – The groundbreaking protocol of lending

Trava aims to provide users with the optimal lending functions by supporting users of lending services through on-chain data analysis mechanisms. Currently, Trava Finance is deployed on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), allowing for lending with BSC tokens at initial stages and cross-chain lending available after.     

Furthermore, as an innovative lending platform with the long-term vision of diversifying forms of lending, the Trava team offers players with NFTs Renting Service, which plays as a peer-to-peer renting platform. 

Addressing today’s concerns of NFTs 

In this day and age, a growing trend in the NFTs sector is for projects to encompass community benefits that go along with the ownership of their tokens. Hence, players also want to retain the possession of precious NFTs to earn tremendous profits. 

The Trava team aims to revolutionize the thriving play-to-earn industry by unfolding the possibility for owners to monetize their idle in-game digital assets without selling them. Specifically, Trava provides a pool and a marketplace where players can deposit and list their spare NFTs to lend out for a specific amount of time. The fundamental principle of this system is that the ownership of these NFTs can not be transferred without the owners’ permission. On the other hand, the advent of Trava rental service also opens the avenue for borrowers to temporarily use NFTs with small funds to earn profits if they otherwise do not want to purchase or are not for sale.  

Trava’s future scope is to integrate NFTs Renting Service into multiple play-to-earn platforms for the sake of players. At the first stage, Trava has established partnership and integration of NFTs Rental Feature for Kawaii Islands. This NFT play-to-earn game creates a fantasy universe on the cloud for multi-players to experience simulation gaming.  

Sharing about this partnership, CTO & Co-founder of Trava Finance, Mr. Thang Nguyen said: “​​This is a combination of Defi and Gamefi to open a new horizon. We believe that this partnership can prove how NFTs are used in TRAVA Lending Ecosystem and demonstrate unique utilities the team brings to users.”  

To celebrate this milestone, there will be an NFTs staking program with attractive incentives for early stakers. The details will be announced soon on Trava’s official channels.  

Currently Trava has launched a marketplace for users to rent out their NFTs. This brings great meaning to Trava and its users. Trava welcomes cooperation with Gamefi and NFT projects alike, making it a diverse marketplace with many user benefits.

Follow Trava’s official channels to find more detail: 

Website |Telegram |Announcement |Twitter |Medium |Reddit

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

For many advisors, allocating to bitcoin for their clients is a difficult thing to do. Advisors are faced with a difficult decision: They can use something like the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to gain exposure, or they can help their clients set up a bitcoin/crypto account that is not under their management.

Outside of these two options, there really aren’t many other solutions that are easily accessible for advisors. This problem has caused quite a few debates in the advisory world – one that could quite easily be solved with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approving a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

The first bitcoin ETF filing was made in 2013, and was quickly denied by the SEC. The last formal bitcoin ETF denial happened in 2018. There is now quite a list of bitcoin ETF applications waiting to be approved or rejected by the SEC. Most of them are “physical” bitcoin ETFs – funds that will hold actual BTC.

Interestingly, there are several bitcoin futures-based ETFs waiting to be approved, with the first-ever ETF approval being the ProShares Bitcoin Futures fund (BITO), which began trading this week. Another notable application is Cathie Wood’s Ark Investments’ (ARKA) futures-based ETF.

Beginning in the first part of 2021, with Gary Gensler now the chairman of the SEC, we’ve seen multiple bitcoin ETF filings. According to Nate Geraci, the host of the “ETF Prime” podcast and president of the ETF Store, a registered investment advisor, this was due to the fact that Gensler has been seen as being historically pro-crypto, having taught blockchain courses at MIT.

Futures-based ETF vs. ‘physical’ ETF

As of Oct. 19, the SEC approved a futures-based ETF and the first fund (BITO, by ProShares) began trading. The fund had an astounding nearly $1 billion of volume in the first day of trading. To put this in perspective, this is the highest first-day organic volume seen in ETF history.

Bitcoin futures held by a fund create interesting problems, however. For example, if the bitcoin futures curve is in “contango” (the out-months are trading at a higher price than the front-months), this is equivalent to selling low and buying high. When futures are held in an ETF, they must be rolled at the end of each month. This creates what is called a negative roll yield – creating a decay in terms of return.

What this really boils down to is that a futures-based ETF will have a difficult time tracking the spot bitcoin price, and it will be an expensive way for advisors to allocate to bitcoin for their clients. But it might be the easiest option for quite a while.

“One of the main benefits of a futures-based ETF is that the futures are cash settled. There’s no custody. So, if the SEC has any issues around custody with bitcoin itself, that won’t be a concern with a futures-based bitcoin ETF,” according to Nate Geraci.

A “physical” ETF, however, does not have the same problems as a futures-based solution. While crypto trading, custody and reporting is more expensive than traditional finance, a physical bitcoin ETF will not have the same drag as a futures-based ETF. We can certainly expect a physical bitcoin ETF to be more expensive than most ETFs on the market, but likely cheaper than a futures-based ETF.

We can also expect a physical bitcoin ETF to track the spot bitcoin price more accurately than a futures-based ETF. Companies like Grayscale, which currently offers the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), have filed to convert to the ETF structure. [Editor’s note: Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk.] GBTC currently trades at a -20% discount to the spot bitcoin price, a phenomenon that many ETF experts believe will go to 0% upon ETF conversion.

Nate Geraci, for example, believes that we will not see a physical bitcoin ETF approved until the second half of 2022 at the earliest – and I agree with him. This is unfortunate because there is obviously demand for a physical bitcoin ETF.

Other means of crypto exposure

Advisors might wonder what other solutions exist for achieving bitcoin exposure for their clients. There are a few firms that offer separately managed bitcoin and crypto accounts (SMAs), but implementing these strategies is not as simple or elegant as simply buying an ETF.

One major advantage that SMAs have over ETFs is the fact they are able to trade actual bitcoin and potentially earn yield on the position. They are also much nimbler and won’t be limited to one cryptocurrency. As a bitcoin investor since 2012, I personally believe direct ownership is the best way to purchase bitcoin (although often not the most convenient).

The bitcoin ETF marketplace is quickly evolving. Advisors will shortly have the ability to allocate to bitcoin for their clients in multiple different ways: helping clients set up crypto accounts with crypto exchanges, a futures-based ETF, or even an SMA. Advisors are responsible for determining and researching the best way to achieve this allocation. Fortunately, it seems that the number of opportunities to do so is quickly increasing.

Until recently, there has been little that’s passive about cryptocurrency. From the get-go, buying bitcoin or alternative coins (altcoins) requires research – at least enough to open a digital wallet or app that lets your clients buy cryptocurrency, such as Robinhood, CashApp or Venmo.

Then there’s the market news, which changes every day. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has made significant strides in the conversation about regulating the $2 trillion asset class – including approving a bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) to begin trading this week.

But still, a futures-based ETF differs from a physically backed ETF and will likely benefit traders more than passive investors, Matt Hougan of Bitwise told CoinDesk’s Emily Parker last week. According to Hougan, the futures-based bitcoin ETF is part of the SEC’s “crawl, walk, run” approach to opening up the growing crypto market to everyday investors.

Access and value

Self-directed retail investors are able to access crypto easily, Hougan said, and have been for the past eight years. But advisors aren’t yet allocating their clients’ portfolios to the currency because there’s not yet a regulatory structure that lets them do so easily. It will be a while, it seems, before many advisors recommend crypto as anything more than a speculative investment.

“Unlike a dollar, the value of bitcoin [or crypto] can vary greatly on a day-to-day basis,” says Nashville-based certified financial planner Jeanne Fisher. This volatility is enough to make financial planners and advisors keep the blinders on and stick to the basic investment recommendations of Roth IRAs, no-fuss index funds and low-cost ETFs.

Yet, as Texas-based certified financial planner Morgen Rochard pointed out in an issue of the Crypto for Advisors newsletter last month, bitcoin has the highest risk-adjusted returns according to the Sharpe ratio.

The built-in scarcity of bitcoin in particular – along with its verifiability, portability, and durability – makes it one of the most historically deflationary types of currencies we’ve seen, argued Rochard. Unlike putting cash into a typical savings account, or even a high-yield account that earns clients 1% to 2%, storing cash as crypto is arguably easier and more potentially lucrative.

So is crypto a passive investment?

Crypto is therefore seen as an investment. But is it a passive one? Most financial planners say no, citing impossible-to-predict liquidity and growth. Even though bitcoin reached a new all-time high this week during the optimistic futures ETF buzz, some planners are giving it time to see if its value will continue climbing amid all the inevitable changes ahead.

Sentiment can do more than make investors weary: It can also influence markets, points out Lazetta Rainey Braxton, a New York-based certified financial planner and co-founder.

“When China said no to crypto, all of [the crypto values] tanked,” Braxton says, referring to the country’s recent crypto crackdown.

Therefore, Braxton recommends to her clients to cover all of the basics before getting into crypto: having a robust emergency fund, a retirement account such as a 401(k) or IRA (or both), and a passive brokerage account comprising index funds and ETFs.

Clients’ crypto money can then be their “play money,” says Braxton, who recommends to her clients they max out their crypto investments at only 5% of their portfolios.

While Braxton’s advice is common among financial planners, who understandably must protect their clients’ money and mitigate risk, it also helps to zoom out and help your clients understand the unique value they personally see in owning and/or using cryptocurrency.

Conceptualizing crypto for clients

Earlier this month, Adam Blumberg, a certified financial planner and founder of the cryptocurrency education company Interaxis, outlined three ways you can conceptualize an investment in bitcoin in particular for clients: As an economic revolution, as a macro investment (a way large funds and governments can protect value amid global economic influences), and as a micro investment – meaning, for the average person.

Identifying these areas will help your clients begin to see where they fit into the global picture and decide whether to wait for more passive crypto investing options coming one day, or to tighten up their financial foundation and prepare to take part now.

And if your clients are ready to begin using bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies to diversify their portfolios today, be sure to understand the 10 things every beginner crypto investor should know.

The price of bitcoin just suffered a flash crash, falling from $65,500 to as low as $8,200 on crypto exchange Binance.US. That’s an 88% drop that happened in a matter of seconds.

On other exchanges, the price fell but not by anywhere near as much. Generally, it dropped to around $64,200, with the price of ether also falling from $4,300 to $4,100.

The price of bitcoin briefly fell to $8,200. Source: Binance.US.

This could have been caused by what’s known as a fat finger error (where a trader accidentally enters the wrong price) or by a large market order instead of selling their position in blocks of trades. Alternatively it’s possible it could have been a deliberate trade to manipulate the market.

Following the crash, the price of bitcoin briefly recovered to around $65,000 before reversing back to $64,500 at press time. The price of ether has struggled to recover too and is trading around $4,170.

We have reached out to Binance.US and will update this story if we hear back.

For more breaking stories like this, make sure to follow The Block on Twitter. H/T to @str8edgeracer for pointing this story out.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Canadian crypto miner Hut 8 Mining (Nasdaq: HUT) has bought 12,000 new MicroBT M30S, M30S+ and M30S++ miners from Inchigle Technology Hong Kong Ltd.

• The miner bought the units for $58.7 million, a cost of around $50/Terahash, with aggregate incremental production of 1.17 exahash per second.
• Delivery is expected to start in January 2022 at a rate of about 1,000 machines a month, with full deployment by December 2022.
• The full deployment of the new miners will bring Hut 8′s total contracted capacity to approximately 3.57 EH/s.
• The new miners, along with the previous announced buys, will be deployed at the company’s two sites in Alberta and a third site, which is under development.
• In June, Hut 8 announced that it holds “approximately 3,806″ bitcoin on its balance sheet, which it expects to increase to 5,000 by the end of the year.

Read more: Hive Leads Crypto Mining Stocks Higher as Bitcoin Hits All-Time High